Karate Tonight…

Karate was pretty good tonight. I was elected to help out the white belts by standing next to them during class and showing them what to do. There’s a new kid named Grant (he’s seven), who picked up REALLY quickly considering Odewaldt couldn’t figure out that there were new people there and continued with his normal mechanical automoton warmups. That’s funny, because he appointed me to go help them out. Oh well. The other white belt is the father of one of the yellow belt kids, so he had observed for quite awhile and didn’t need much hand holding.

Anyway, this kid kept up pretty well during the warmups. Then Sensei Brewer showed up. We did a pretty basic workout, but it was pretty tough to give the new people the basic information they needed (what front stance was, how do I make a fist, etc). The kid was pretty inquisitive too… he saw Hickman-san sitting out and asked why, what he should call the black belts, where to stand, why we bow at the door, how old I was, and a torrent of other questions. He kept up remarkably well considering it was his first night and that he was seven. I wish I caught on so quick.

I like it when enthusiastic kids show up that appear to pay attention well and try to do their best. It’s those kids that will eventually grow up to spar all of us in our old age. Grant said he was going to come back on Thursday, if his “real mom” lets him. I hope she does.

I really hope my kids are into Karate, if and when they show up.

The second class tonight was VERY laid back considering some of the stuff we’ve been through lately. We did a whole night of kata, the first I can remember in a long time. All the Heians (twice, then once slowly like “fast Tai Chi”), then Bassai Dai, Kanku Dai, and Unsu. I had forgotten how much I liked Unsu, and it brought me back to the days when I used to watch Sensei Hartman and Sensei Jennings do that kata together. If I can remember it, I’m going to try to do that kata more.

There was some talk from McCabe-san about doing more tournaments. This is a good thing, but I’m still REALLY twitchy about the tournament scene since the Macomb dojo. It would break my heart to see our dojo reduced to slap fighting and bastardizing parts of katas in order to make them more flowery and pretty to judges. I don’t think that will happen at all, but I have seen the other side of this equation and it’s nothing I want.